Page 52 of Beauty and the Billionaire

My impatience with his sorry behavior over the last three days was such that he understood its limits had been reached without us exchanging a word on the subject.

Anger filled me beyond my capacity to hold it in when he tried to ask me how I was.

“How should I be?” I snapped. “Do you want to see a sniveling girl crying into the pages of her diary? Do you want to fix my pigtails?”

Orwell had the nerve to shoot me daggers with his eyes before abandoning me at the breakfast table with less than half of the regular items served. I didn’t see him for the rest of the day, his tasks falling onto a visiting server whose job was to help in the kitchen in the mornings and evenings. His explanationwas that Orwell was suffering from a migraine that had plagued him his entire life. I didn’t have the patience to explain to the boy that Orwell was lying. He had never had a migraine, and even if he had, the man was more oak than flesh and blood, and a migraine wouldn’t have stopped him. No. He was proving to me what an insufferable ass I was.

Orwell performed his duties the following morning without a word. He knew how important it was to prepare the house for the visitor, but he refused to speak to me. All I got from the man was a pitiful look that he was more than welcome to keep it to himself.

Why am I the villain?I wanted to ask, but I held back. Even in my anger, I knew I didn’t want some questions answered.

The day dragged on like all the days since that eventful afternoon. I steered clear of remembering it. What would be the point?

I paced the sitting room, which I had refused to enter since then until this morning. Unable to work, I oversaw Orwell’s inspection of the cleanliness, the way he fixed the little details, and suffered the looks I received from him.

When he was nearing the end of his tour, I barked, “I don’t want him to see the folder.”

“Perhaps you should consider hiding it, sir,” Orwell scoffed and left the room.

Whatever had happened on the night Orwell drove Zain home, it had changed the man. He was against me, unlike any other time in our lives. But he was welcome to it. I didn’t depend on the opinions of my employees so long as we all respected the terms of our contracts. His feelings were irrelevant. All feelings were.

I sat down and tapped my foot. I tapped it as the sun rose to the zenith and began to descend. Once, I made a break for lunch,then returned to the sitting room, resumed my place, and gazed into the flames as the seconds and minutes ticked away.

At long last, a car appeared in the distance, driving slowly between the mounds of cleared snow all the way to the main entrance of the house. Orwell didn’t protest. For all his insufferable sulking, he understood when to be professional. He let the visitor inside the house, and I felt the sudden need to employ extra help to scrub the floors before the day was out. The presence of this man in my home, my only place of complete safety and belonging, made me sick.

When the door of the sitting room opened, my valet cleared his throat. “Mr. Hale is here to see you.” He didn’t wait for a reply before he allowed Julian Hale to swagger into my sitting room.

The man was a pompous ass. His blond, windswept hair, his cold-reddened cheeks, and the slight sneer touching his lips and nose were his trademark appearance. It was beneath him to be summoned. He had better things to do than drive here to visit the likes of me.

Oh, but he knew I had his balls in my fist. Even without the hard work of the investigator I had hired, enough of Julian’s fate was in my hands that he obeyed. This contemptuous stare he graced me with was just an act of saving his face, but it wouldn’t last. It was his face I wanted. I wanted to see him ashamed, his dignity in shreds, and his life crashing down in flames around him. And then, I wanted to ask him why it was right for him to enjoy bending for a guy when it had been so wrong for me in college. I wanted to see him stammer and blubber and cry. I wanted to hear him beg.

“Blackthorne,” Julian said, almost as if he were a little surprised to see me here. Perhaps he was implying that he’d expected me to stand up for his self-important entrance.

“Leave us,” I told Orwell. I didn’t want the man witnessing something he was so strongly against. I also enjoyed seeing the look on Julian Hale’s face when he realized he wouldn’t be served a fine drink or something to eat. Oh no. We were going to be alone.

“Sir.” Orwell shut the door on his way out.

Silence settled in the room, disrupted only by the hum of fire in the fireplace when a few dry logs collapsed onto the glowing embers and began burning hotly.

“You are late,” I pointed out.

“I’m a busy guy, Blackthorne,” he replied impatiently.

“Is that so?” I eyed him as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other, looking out the window like he was expecting someone. “I recall making you unemployed.”

He snorted. “Gives me time to spend with my family.”

I bit back the entirety of what I wished to say to him despite such an excellent opening. “You’re welcome,” I said instead.

He bristled and said nothing for a long time. He watched the white blanket of snow stretching into the endless distance. The sky was so pale that it almost blended with the land far away. Scattered trees dotter the horizon, their bare branches twisting in incredible ways.

When Julian Hale turned away from the view, his gaze landed on me. “Why did you need to see me?”

“Why wouldn’t I? We’re old college buddies, aren’t we?” Anger simmered just below the surface, its quality reflecting in my voice.

“We were generally in the same place around the same time,” Julian acknowledged.

The image of him from my early days at Harvard flashed before my eyes. He had been such a dashing guy. He’d been cocky as hell, which hadn’t changed, but also handsome and charming. Receiving a look from him in those days had pressedsuch new and exciting buttons in my body, and Julian must have realized it. He must have. It had exposed a weakness in me so long ago, and he had jumped at the opportunity to fling his arrows to that soft little spot I had revealed.

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